Clockwise from left: Vernon Subutex 1 by Virginie Despentes; Go, Went, Gone by Jenny Erpenbeck; Die, My Love by Ariana Harwicz; Frankenstein in Baghdad by Ahmed Saadawi; The World Goes On by Lazlo Krasznahorkai and The Dinner Guest by Gabriela Ybarra.
Composite: PR

Former winners of the Man Booker International prize Han Kang and László Krasznahorkai will go head to head on this year’s longlist, competing with the cream of authors from around the world for the £50,000 award.

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Chaired by the author Lisa Appignanesi, the judges considered 108 books, with their longlist of 13 titles ranging from the horror of Iraqi author Ahmed Saadawi’s Frankenstein in Baghdad, in which a monster roams the streets of the US-occupied city, to Taiwanese writer Wu Ming-Yi’s The Stolen Bicycle, which sees a writer embark on a quest to find both his vanished father and the titular missing bike.

“It’s a cornucopia of a list – greats people will recognise and some newcomers,” said Appignanesi. She described the process of judging the award as “exhilarating”. “Every time you pick up a book you’re not only in a different geographical location but in a different form of cultural imagination with a whole different set of traditions to take on board and that in itself is exhilarating,” she said.

Two heavy hitters from Spain – Javier Cercas and Antonio Muñoz Molina – have also made the longlist, alongside fellow Spanish writer Gabriela Ybarra for her debut, The Dinner Guest. Acclaimed German writer Jenny Erpenbeck is nominated for her novel about African asylum seekers Go, Went, Gone, as is the bestselling French novelist Laurent Binet for The 7th Function of Language, in which a character begins to suspect he is a character in a novel. His fellow French writer Virginie Despentes’s Vernon Subutex 1, is a“post punk street novel set in the rock world”, said Appignanesi.

She praised the strong showing from independent publishers on this year’s 13-book longlist: independent presses accounted for more than half of the nominated titles.

“I think we have to raise our hats to independent publishers. It does cost money to translate, it’s harder to publish, harder to sell. But I think the readership for foreign fiction is growing and growing and that can only be a good thing. We’ve always been an island that looks out to the world, and here’s the world coming to us in an extraordinary range of ways. That’s terrific,” said Appignanesi.

“Tastes have shifted in Britain and there’s a great hunger for seeing things afresh, for fresh uses of the novel, fresh work. [Translated fiction] not only opens our minds but it opens our hearts as well. You are living with people as you read.”

The longlist is completed with Argentine author Ariana Harwicz’s Die, My Love, Austrian Christoph Ransmayr’s The Flying Mountain and Polish writer Olga Tokarczuk’s Flights. There are 10 languages represented in the line-up; one translator, Frank Wynne makes the cut twice, for translating Cercas and Despentes. The £50,000 prize, which is intended to celebrate the “finest works of translated fiction from around the world”, is divided equally between the author and the translator of the winning entry.

Appignanesi, and her fellow judges the poet Michael Hofmann, authors Hari Kunzru and Helen Oyeyemi and journalist Tim Martin will announce their shortlist on 12 April. The winner will be revealed on 22 May.